By Margot Patrick

Just seven weeks in the job, she gave polished responses on U.K. banking’s competitive landscape, while outlining some of her priorities for Santander U.K. this year.

It helped that the lawmakers were on their best behavior, after last week’s tense session that committee chairman Andrew Tyrie acknowledged had included some “rather intrusive” questions on Diamond’s pay and Barclays’ tax arrangements.

In contrast, Botin seemed to push all the right buttons, saying Santander U.K. will make a commitment to the government on providing new loans to small businesses, and is working to improve its handling of customer complaints.

She said the bank has no plans to close branches this year and indeed will open new outlets in addition to the 318 branches it picked up from Royal Bank of Scotland last year. In all, Santander U.K. should end 2011 with around 1,700 branches, further cementing its hold on the U.K. high street since its rapid expansion through acquisitions including Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley.

While Santander U.K.’s ambitions are alarming to some smaller players who see the bank as just one more big incumbent with entrenched market share, they were well received by the committee. Tyrie closed the session by saying the Santander experience is in many ways “refreshing” for U.K. customers.

Asked about Santander’s bonus plans Botin adeptly squashed the line of questioning, noting that Santander contributed only around 1% of the £3.5 billion raised from the U.K.’s one-time, 50% bonus tax last year, while having something like a 12% share of the retail banking market. She said her bonus last year as CEO of Spain’s Banesto was €1.7 million.

Apart from pay, lending to small businesses has been politicians’ major bone of contention with banks. Like other bank chiefs, Botin said low demand continues to be an issue, and that reduced liquidity in the financial system would put a further cap on loan volume. But she said Santander U.K. aims to be a “bigger player and a better player” in SME lending, and has added 150 new relationship managers to drive the business.

The appearance was Botin’s first major public engagement since taking over as Santander U.K. CEO on Dec. 1. Investors considering buying shares in the bank if it floats later this year are likely to be impressed.

I can attest to the fact that Ana is extremely smart, intelligent, and a great professional. It is a pity that Banco Santander hires people because they're family or friends of some Directors of the Board who know nothing about Banking. They are a pool of Ex-Arthur Andersen people (Board Members are ex-Auditors) and family and friends hired have been wners of "IT Boddy SHOPS" most of their lives.

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